[tobiasSoftware]

I highly recommend a recent game called Outer Wilds that in my opinion takes the adventure game genre to the next level by giving it an open world feel. It does this through three ideas.

First, there are no collectible items, the game is about seeking information and it uses that information as the keys to unlock new areas instead of items. This does make the game very spoilerable though, but it removes the "combine item 1 with item 2" type of puzzles that are infamous for feeling constrained.

Second, it gives you an information map showing if there is any information left to find in each area. This gets around the problem of "pixel hunting" that early adventure games had where you missed something subtle so you had to wander through the entire game over again trying to find what you missed.

Third, "late game" areas are accessible at any time but are locked behind multiple pieces of information. This means that you actually can get to late game areas early on, but most people simply won't. This gives the game a sort of "trust the player" feel, where instead of putting the game on rails to make sure no one goes off the track, the developers remove the rails and trust that most players will loosely follow the path they planned, even though some will inevitably jump the track and go through the game in a weird order.

[Shorn]

This game's been sitting in my Steam wishlist for so long. You've convinced me :)